There is a news item in the UK today about the extension of the CRB checks scheme. For those who don't live in the UK this is the law whereby people who work with children in any capacity have to be checked before they are employed to find out if they have a criminal record. The initials stand for Criminal Records Bureau. The need for such checks is being extended to parents who volunteer to drive children on school trips and the like.
Personally I can't see any real objection although, being subject regularly to such checks myself, I can think of all sorts of ways that the administration of the checks could be improved.
I'm more interested in a phrase that I have heard, in one form or another, on every news report about the topic. It is constantantly being stated that the extension is being introduced "in the wake of the Soham murders".

The Soham murders were the deaths of two schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, at the hands of school caretaker Ian Huntley. They took place seven years ago, in 2002. This seems to me an odd use of "in the wake of", which I would have considered to be only used following very recent events. The new checks may be right, just and sensible but I cannot see how, unless the legislation was proposed in 2002 and taken all this time to come to fruition, it can be considered to be "in he wake of Soham" or, indeed, influenced by it. Previous measures may well, of course, have deserved the description.

Does the length of time involved seem to others to be at odds with the use of the phrase?

Does the length of time involved seem to others to be at odds with the use of the phrase?

That's how I'd use in the wake of, Bob. Others may think otherwise.

Since the metaphor suggests symbolic ripples in the water from a passing event, it does suggest to me a time constraint. "Repurcussions" seems no better since it too suggests a limited time.

I say this because I'm a literalist, whereas those who don't insist on close association of metaphor to event would no doubt feel otherwise.

I'd say it's rationalization. They need a reason to enact the law and they search history until they locate one.

Personally, I think those checks are ridiculous in their application. One blog related how parents who had not passed the check were not allowed in any of their children's classrooms -- even when all parents were invited to participate in a school program.

Assuming the parent is a child molester, is he/she going to do anything in a crowded classroom or auditorium filled with other parents?

On the whole I think CRB checks, and some of the proposed new checks, are a good idea. The problem is how they are administered. You cannot apply for them except in reference to a specific job and the slow turn around in processing means that you probably won't have the checks complete by the time you are due to take up the job.
Worse than that though is that they apply to the specific person in the specific job. This means that if I work in six different places in a year I have to have six separate but identical sets of checks performed and six separate but identical certificates issued.
Far be it for cynical old me to suggest that the large fee payable for each check has anything to do with this bonkers way of organising things.

The clear and obvious way to organise it would be

to require anyone in the relevant professions to have a certificate,
to make it an annual application (like renewing your car insurance),
to NOT make it institution specific
to do away with the fee

This would mean that, for a new employer, all teachers etc would have to do is show that they possess a valid certificate once a year. All the institution would need to do is hold a record of the expiry date of each certificate and ask to see a renewal once a year.

Did you have to apply direct yourself, Bob? I had to complete and sign the CRB check application form, but it was processed through our HR division, and they paid the fee.

I believe that this extension to the scope of CRB checks is simply a manifestation of our present Government's "Nanny State" attitude. Although crime against children is a terrible thing, I have seen no evidence that it is any worse now than it was when I was a child.

It gets far greater media attention, of course, but that is a reflection on the greater power and range of the media more than anything else.

And of course, to justify their interference, the authorities have, as Proofreader suggests, just gone back until they have found a tragedy which they can use as a reason.

Hence, "in the wake of" which implies something relatively recent.

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a manifestation of our present Government's "Nanny State" attitude.

Here's a good example of how ridiculous the idea is. Parents cannot be with their children for safety reasons.

Given the fanatical, bellicose actions of some parents, I can almost understand why. Banning just the troublemaking parents would be much more reasoable, though. Enter the term, "Parent attacks coach" in a search engine and you get a LOT of hits! (er, was that a pun?)

"In the wake of" is just another one of those hackneyed phrases that gets beaten to death because it is so useful. It once meant "right after this thing happened," and would be followed by the reaction that occurred. Now it's been used so much that people don't really hear the actual meaning, and it's evolving to mean "Since this thing happened (whenever)," followed by the reaction to it.

But yes, I agree that "in the wake of" should indicate something that happened in the fairly immediate past at least. We're still hearing about tightened security "in the wake of" 9/11, even though eight years have passed and a literal wake only lasts seconds. Maybe the psychological wake of 9/11 will last to eternity though. Still, "Since" or "in the aftermath" would sound better and less trite.

As for background checks, I guess that in the US they are sporadic and depend on the organization. A few years back when I was on my sons' Boy Scout troop committee, I had to fill out a form stating that I had never been charged with or convicted of any crime involving the molestation of children. I'm not sure if the Boy Scouts ever checked that out with the NCIC computer, but I just thought it was completely silly, because apparently the Scouts were covering their behinds legally by going through the motions of doing the check, without actually doing it.

Wordmatic

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Boy Scout troop committee, I had to fill out a form stating that I had never been charged with or convicted of any crime involving the molestation of children.

LOL at that. There have been several recent srticles and documentaries about Scoutmasters molesting their charges, including several who ran a camp where they regularly did so and had the crimes covered up by higher-ups who had themselves been involved.

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Originally posted by arnie:
Did you have to apply direct yourself, Bob? I had to complete and sign the CRB check application form, but it was processed through our HR division, and they paid the fee.

No. Like you I fill the forms, provide the evidence and leave it up to my employers to submit it. A process that I have gone through approximately fifteen times in the last nine years. At least they dropped section E and I no longer have to get new references every time.

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There is a news item in the UK today about the extension of the CRB checks scheme.

We are struggling with this in nursing. The movement is to require background checks of nurses as they renew their licenses, but with 3 million nurses, as well as a nursing shortage, well, you can imagine the problems. First there are errors galore, and nurses are kept from working while those get cleared up. Then, what is "bad enough" to keep nurses from work? We all would agree that murder is bad enough, but what about misdemeanors? Some states "count" those, and some don't. The interesting thing is, from what I hear from the Boards, there are far more people identified with criminal histories (our acronym for it is CBCs..."criminal background checks") than you'd ever imagine. It's scary really. Boards spend an inordinate amount of time deciding if the crime is serious enough to keep the nurses from practicing.

As for the term "in the wake of," I agree with zmj; that's how I'd use it.

That's why it isn't left up to individual organisations here. The CRB is a national body that applies the same standards across the board. Whether those standards are right or wrong is a different question.
As I said though, I was more interested in the "in the wake of" question.

Unfortunately, I suppose after our period with England, we have "state's rights" in nursing (and medical) regulation. Each state has its own laws, and they vary quite a bit. In one state, for example, you can get a mark on your license because you fished without a fishing license. In others, a felony in your background isn't an absolute bar to practice, while in others it is. In some cases "states rights" works well because the states are so different. However, in others, such as requirements for criminal background checks, the rules across the states can be so different that it's ridiculous.

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As I said though, I was more interested in the "in the wake of" question.

Sorry for the digression, Bob. I can't remember the details, but weren't these checks already required for teachers, but maybe not for caretakers? ISTR that the need for the checks was rapidly expanded to others who regularly came into conduct with children in course of their work.

The latest requirements seem to expand the need for CRB checks to a much larger number of people. However, reports that people who run car-pooling schemes for the school run, and similar unofficial parents' schemes, would need to be checked, have since been categorically denied.

I think it could still be described as "in the wake of the Soham murders", since they were the main impetus for the original extension, of which this latest change is essentially fine-tuning.